Walking In Circles Blog

2: Nel Mezzo del Cammin

From the Grave to the Cradle

Taking inspiration from Dante’s great opener on the universality of the mid-life crisis, this blog feed and walk explores interwoven routes reflecting the journey from birth to death in Venice, taking in the institutions that symbolise the ‘phases of life’: schools, professional guilds, religious orders and the like. It will meander via the four historical hospitals: Pietà (foundlings) Mendicanti or ‘Ospedaletto’ (Poor) Derelitti (Sick) Incurabili (Incurables or Syphilitic) before heading inevitably to San Michele, the island cemetery. I’ll be looking for signs in the urban landscape that reflect on death, life and everything in between throughout the ages.

Some people In the Middle Ages believed that the plague was spread by ‘vampires’ which, rather than drinking people’s blood, spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after dying (click to read more...)

This plaque, placed in the dilapidated, soft-earthed cloisters on Lazzaretto Vecchio by artist Herman De Vries, reflects on the 1500 victims of plague and leprosy, buried in the communal trench that divides this minuscule island where the word 'quarantine' was invented (click to read more).

A short distance away from these objects of inauspicious birth I begin to see images of death: a more present force in infancy for those foundlings than today’s generation, but nevertheless still twisted into the same umbilical thread. Ti Morti: You (re) Dead (!). (Click to read more)

Google Translate gives us a damn sight funnier and less threatening version than the original curse on all parents that placed their infants on the foundling wheel. The carved plaque was originally adjacent and in clear sight of the desperate. It obliged them to pay (Click to read more)